Tag Archives: Doctor Who

Sunday is, as we all know, a day of rest. Easter Sunday doubly so. Especially when Easter Sunday just happens to be the Sunday after a Saturday at Eastercon.

I’d originally planned a lie in and a late arrival at the con. However, fate and a chance encounter with one of the Green room staff on Saturday that led to a promise to help out on Sunday morning meant that I was now honour bound, by ancient compact and powerful dark con magic, to an earlier start than I’d had the entire con so far.

Which was fine, only I did one of my usual errors and turned up for my shift a whole hour earlier than I thought it was.

But it was fine and I had an enjoyable morning ticking people off lists and organising drinks for participants in panels and talks.

My next call was a post lunch coffee date with John Scalzi. This was 12 people in a room talking with John Scalzi with tea and coffee available (though John Seemed happy with Coke Zero). Three minutes before the official start of this event, he told us the story that had to be left off the record about a con a few years ago (and I will hold to that unofficial gagging order but I am totes teasing you with the fact I know something you don’t know… unless you were involved or at this event…) before launching into the event proper. What followed was an hour of questions and discussion with John holding forth on many topics ranging from his work as a consultant for Stargate Universe to his work as a film reviewer, his writing career, his love of fan art on stuff from ‘Sex, Death and Robots’ and his reflections on his post about straight white male being ‘easy mode’ in the game of life. As always, the coffee events are a weird sort of mix of informal ‘hanging out with the author’ combined with a more formal interview event. This one was so popular, they had to organise a second one later in the day.

After this and a short break where I did some more volunteering, I headed to a talk called ‘The Genius of Rosa’ by our old blog buddy, Russel A Smith. This looked at the episide of series 11 of Doctor Who that was set at the time of the (in)famous Rosa Parks bus protest. Russ went into detail on the episode and talked about the history and social context of the episode. The talk was mainly focussed on tackling the opposition to the episode, the negative comments that came (it seemed) simply because it was an episode about a black woman protesting. Each objection (like ‘the message was too heavy handed’) was answered in the talk.

Then there was a panel on Medicine in SF in which a bunch of medical doctors and biomedical scientists looked at concepts of medicine in science fiction and discussed the viablity of the methods. A lot of time was spent on the possibility of ‘AI Doctors’ similar to the Doctor from Voyager and what this may mean in terms of patient care and the risk of litigation (who is to blame if a medical AI makes a mistake?) but there was also time for a bit of discussion aboutpersonalised medicine, homeopathy and the sort of medical scams that exist now and how these may be worse in the future.

The final panel of the day was called ‘History of Representation in Doctor Who’. This panel looked at how well Doctor Who covered issues like race, sexuality, sexism and disablism. The panel looked at examples of this and considered their own first experiences of Doctor Who and how that affected them. Highlights included Fiona Moore discussing how some showrunners were really bad at feminism if they tried to be feminist but actually really good if they didn’t try and Guest of Honour DC pointing out how Barbara (first Doctor Who female companion) was actually a really strong character for her time with a lot of agency. There was also an almost universal fanship for Captain Jack Harkness.

After this, it was time for dinner and the bar… and spending all the hard earned groats from volunteering…

Sunday turned out to be the first (and only) full day I spent at the convention. I guess this is the disadvantage of living locally. While you get to save on hotel costs and travel costs, you miss out on some of the stuff that happens late into the night and early into the morning. Plus there is a tendency (for me anyway) to have to leave early to catch the last bus home and wander in lazily late the next day. Since it is unlikely Manchester will host for at least a couple of years, I suppose any future EasterCons I go to will be more full time.

As it happens, I made an effort on Sunday to get there early for a good reason which turned into an even better reason. I had promised R.A Smith that I would be present at the panel he was in with my camera so that I could take photos of him looking all knowledgeable and erudite. Since this panel was happening at 10am, and was therefore a so called ‘hangover panel’ this meant I needed to be in the building by not long after 9 in order (so I thought) to get a seat in what I suspected would be a packed room.

I was wrong on so many of the above assumptions…

This is where were staying… can you not see its similarity to a giant USB drive?

When I wandered up to the Green room to see if I could track down Russ before the start of the panel, I was collared by Starburst Columnist Ed Fortune, another of the panellists, and asked if I was doing anything just then. I said I was not and was therefore pressganged into service as a substitute panellist. Turns out Tony Ballantyne could not make it so I was a convenient Manchester based writer to contribute to the Manchester in Spec Fiction panel.

So, my assumption that I would not get a seat was unfounded as I had a reserved seat… right at the front. However, it also turns out that I didn’t need to worry even if I had not been in the panel as the venue was one of the larger rooms in the hotel rather than one of the smaller rooms such as used for the True Love and Trophies panel. There was still a large audience but the room was easily able to accommodate it with a few seats spare. I also did not manage to take any photos as I was somewhat busy being on the panel… Oh, and the audience were somewhat more awake than a ‘hangover’ panel might attract. They seemed to be a rather lively and interested group all told.

The John Rylands library: for all your Cthuloid needs.

So… thrown into the deep end… and replacing a popular and well respected panellist in a HUGE auditorium with microphones instead of the more intimate setting of previous panels. The pressure was on. Luckily, I was able to call on a lot of knowledge I have about the city of Manchester. Myself, R.A Smith (the moderator), Anne Charnock and Ed Fortune discussed various things that made this city unusual and suitable as a setting for Spec fic. Anne was there with a lot of history references (first programmable computer, various other scientific advances including the recent graphene advances), I came in with the politics (Manchester has to take the blame for communism and even in the last election, when the map went decidedly blue, Manchester was one of the few areas still very red), Russ talked about the Madchester music scene and Ed rolled in some classics like Jeff Noon and Alan Garner while riffing off some Doctor Who audio set in the city and centring on the Peterloo massacre (with the comment made that he worked in an office on the corner of two of the streets mentioned in that audio and how that scared him). In all an excellent discussion and was supplemented by the comments from the audience about how strange some of the architecture in Manchester is… including the building we were in which does (as Russ pointed out) look like a giant USB stick. Speculations about what it might be downloading may be left in the comments below… Then there is the perfectly apt venue for an occult conspiracy novel that is the John Rylands library.

By the way, if the organisers of next years Eastercon in Birmingham are reading this, I would like to point out that I also lived in Birmingham for a long while and know an equal amount of weird stuff about that city should they wish a panellist for a similar topic… 🙂

Apparently it is Starburst tradition to take a selfie with the Stormtrooper… who am I to go against such tradition?

Once that panel was over, Ed invited me over to the Starburst offices to do a spot on the Bookworm – FAB radio’s regular Sunday book related show. We spent an hour talking book news (JK Rowling’s publication of her rejection letters being a major item of interest) and discussing the convention. As all three on the show (me, Ed and Ann the producer) were Eastercon newbies this mainly revolved around the atmosphere of the event as well as a discussion about some of the panels we had each attended. My first time on radio… The Podcast version will be published soon and I will post a link to that once it is up.

The Public Engagement in Science Panel

I got back to the venue and had a spot of lunch before wandering into the Public Engagement in science panel. Here a number of the conference delegates who were also scientists were discussing the issues of getting the public interested in all things science related. This, like the biology one on Friday, was an issue close to my heart and something I see both writers and teachers being involved in. The discussion was initially focussed on semantics – the differences between Understanding and Engagement, for example – and there were some good thoughts on how it should be about the public doing science – using the innate curiosity that humanity possesses to explore the universe – rather than just reading about it. Not sure they managed to solve the problem, at least not by supplying any practical solutions, but there were ideas aplenty.

A storm hits Manchester, as seen from the 22nd floor

My final official engagement of the day was a visit to the Strange Horizons Tea party which was taking place in the Presidential Suite, 22 floors in the sky. There I hobnobbed with the editors of Strange Horizons and chatted with Ruth F Long again, mainly discussing Irish history and some strange anomalies in the Irish census data. A fun hour of chat and drinks and a chance to see the city from the great heights of the 22nd Floor. While a major storm was blowing in…

Then I ended the evening with a bit of relaxation in the form of a game of D&D refereed by Adrian Tchaikovsky. In this I joined R.A Smith, Ed Fortune, LM Myles, Peadar Ó Guilínn and Annie Czajkowski as a disparate group of monsters (I was a hobgoblin sergeant major) forced together out of mutual desire to escape a curse. It turned out exactly as you would expect a game run and played by a bunch of creative lunatics to go. Luckily the day was saved (thanks to cunning subterfuge, careful following of the letter of the rules, beheading a forger and the catchphrase ‘Greetings fellow humans!’) in time for me to head home…

In our final instalment shudder as the unexpected happens and Sunday is inexplicably followed by… MONDAY!

In our last instalment of ‘Eastercon’, we went through Friday, including the True Love and Trophies panel starring Yours Truly. Today I intend to work through the events of Saturday…

The ‘Balancing the Creative Life’ panel.

I had a late start on Saturday and a relatively easy day. I turned up at 1pm in time for a panel which I felt was very relevant to me – Balancing the Creative life. This starred Tony Ballantyne as moderator and had Jackie Burns, David L Clements. Peter Ellis and Juliet Kemp discussing the issues of maintaining a 9 – 5 day job while also writing or producing art to a high enough standard. Several of the panellists claimed to cheat. Peter Ellis stated that he had not really started to write properly until he was retired from his full time teaching job and David L Clements was quick to point out that his job as an Astrophysicist did actually provide a lot of useful research material for SF novels. This panel also covered issues like being a carer for a family member and how to cope with raising a family. From that discussion I came away with a sense that I was doing a lot of the things needed to be both a full time worker and a writer – things like considering plotlines and character development in the otherwise dead time spent travelling to and from work, making good use of holidays and so on. I was also made aware of the wonders of noise cancelling headphones when it comes to shutting out distractions…

General bustle of the Con

Later in the afternoon, I tried to attend the Female gaze panel, mainly because it was mentioned as part of the True Love and Trophies panel and was something I was interested in. However, it seems as though our ringing endorsement of this panel during our slot was enough to get them full long before the panel was due to start. So unfortunately I missed it, as did Ruth F Long who I caught up with later in an attempt to find out if she had learnt anything from it.

So, instead I decided to wander into a talk that was taking place in a larger room next door which was entitled ‘the Ecology of Doctor Who’ by Eira and Smuzz. This wasn’t (as you might expect) a discussion of fictional alien ecology but rather an interesting overview of the relationship between Doctor Who as a BBC TV programme and the ecological issues that were prevalent at different points in its history. Covering such things as the nuclear fears of the 50s, fuel crisis, deforestation and how these were represented in the show. The narrative was accompanied by a series of clips illustrating the points made and though these were plagued by technical hitches which delayed the start of the talk, they did help to make the points clear. The upshot of the talk was that Doctor Who has lost its way recently with regards to stories about the environment, though it is not clear if this is a deliberate policy decision or merely an accident of story selection, and that more should be done to use the show as a tool for educating the viewers about the issues relevant today. It was a talk delivered passionately with a lot of excellent arguments by a speaker who really knew his Who history and made a lot of points I agreed with, though I did disagree that New Who had wholly abandoned its liberal enviro friendly roots as there have been stories covering those issues. However, I am fully in support of there being more of that sort of thing – not just the ecological issues but also social and political ones. Doing the job that SF does so well – warning us about the dangers of the future based on the trends evident in the present.

After the Who talk ended (late due to aforementioned technical issues) I was rescued from the con by a crack team of special forces who dragged me to a restaurant for dinner… after which it was time to return to the convention for drinks and the disco… the disco that I missed due to getting involved in some fascinating discussions with various random people…

OK, I may be a little late to this party as I guess everyone is now talking about last night’s Doctor Who rather than one from a few weeks ago but hey, I am still catching up with this series after missing a lot of the early ones due to my Sky+ Box forgetting it has the capability to record stuff. Some glitch or other meant every episode was showing as ‘failed’ so I had to resort to BBC I-Player and its clunky, user unfriendly interface.*

So, having finally got round to watching the two Zygon episodes I would just like to say: I told you so. Yep, I knew Osgood would be back and I am now totally kicking myself that I had completely forgotten all about the fact that there was a ‘spare’ Osgood in the form of a friendly Zygon. But then I was somewhat lost in my rather neat fantasy series where Osgood becomes a sort of British version of Agent Coulson having been resurrected by flangy Time Lord tech rather than, as actually happened, not dying at all due to there being two of her (though I do rather enjoy the playful speculation over exactly which one died…). I’m also guessing this throws out my other (as yet unwritten) theory that she is actually Romana under a Chameleon circuit. But then I had a similar theory about Donna Noble**. I suppose I just want to see Romana come back so much that I keep theorising ways for it to happen 🙂

If I have one regret about that episode it is that Osgood did not accept the Doctor’s offer to travel as his companion. But I do not think we have seen the last of her…

*Still a massive improvement on those ancient days of video when you needed a PhD in computer science and an A level in Japanese to understand how to programme it to record stuff.

** She gets shot by Davros, somehow survives and emerges talking like a Time Lord… OK we know the reason for that (the whole DoctorDonna thing) but that always struck me as a rather contrived solution when a far more epic and surprising one at the time could have been her death and regeneration in a new form. The ‘new companion’ being basically the old one played by a different actor with a whole host of new issues to come to terms with….

After a very polite (and totally out of the blue) invite from the organisers I trotted ‘oop norf’ to Sheffield for a day at the Yorkshire Cosplay convention at the Magna conference centre. I was accompanied on this trip by Elizabeth Morgan, who you may remember from Vampire Month. Our stated goals were to promote and sell books. Our actual goals included such things as seeing lots of cool Cosplayers and maybe buy some comics.

Luckily, the organisers had guessed our secret agenda and therefore placed us facing the food area where a lot of the Cosplayers were hanging out and right next to a comic stall, the owner of which quickly picked up on Elizabeth’s fangirl thing for Gambit…

You can see the temptation of the Comic stall right next to us…

Regular readers will be aware of my dilemma about dressing for public appearances. For Steampunk it is usually a waistcoat and cravat, for more mundane events a t-shirt and jeans. As this was a Cosplay con, I thought I’d go the whole hog and regency-up in a full tailcoat ensemble and play a character from one of my favourite books – Mr Johnathon Strange from Susanna Clarke’s novel Johnathon Strange and Mr Norrell. I even completed the ensemble with an appropriately titled book of magic (from the list of titles found in the Library at Hurtfew and created by Anachronalia) to make sure everyone was aware of exactly who I was Cosplaying. Not that anyone asked. But then why would they be interested in an unassuming, polite Regency magician when Darth Vader was stalking around with a squad of Stormtroopers, Loki was doing interviews, the Terminator was hamming up a bad Austrian accent, Bumblebee was posing for photos with fans and a great big AT AT was stomping around…

Loki does a piece to the camera for his TV show

This was one of the most impressive costumes I saw. And yes, it is a costume not a model

Vader making an appearance

One of Vader’s honour guard

Oh and Elizabeth got her dream and met her hero…

Gambit meets Elizabeth Morgan

One advantage of my Cosplaying was I got to go into the dressing room and see the real Cosplayers getting ready. This was an experience. The amount of effort and detail that goes into what even the amateur Cosplayers do is phenomenal and these guys were Pros. A lot of elaborate costume, all home made, along with complicated electronics and props all gave the impression of the dressing room for an actual film set rather than a convention in Yorkshire.

The day included a number of interesting discussions with various people who visited the stall. Conversation veered from women in gaming (Gamergate reared its ugly head a little) to women in fiction and LRP. If nothing else I may have managed to steer one young lady who lives in Cornwall towards contacting my old friends in the Blood Red Roses LRP group. During quiet times we tried to keep a count of the number of different versions of the same characters. There were many Catwomen, several Harley Quinns, a couple of Black Widows but only one Black Cat (amazing how much variety a simple black catsuit can give a female Cosplayer). There is a probably a discussion to be had at some point about the lack of female role models leading to many having to dress as the same few characters but that can wait for a later day. Disappointingly we only saw a few versions of the Doctor (why does no one Cosplay William Hartnell? Has to surely be an option for the older Cosplayer) but did see an excellently well done gender switched 10th Doctor and of course there were a number of Daleks and a TARDIS. There was also an Amy Pond in ‘strippergram police uniform’ and a few Poison Ivy’s. In all some excellent costumes.

It was also International Hug A Wookie day. Maybe…

Elizabeth’s stock of badges with quotes from her books went

The 11th Doctor finds time for some comic shopping

quickly with the common refrain being ‘are you sure they are free?’ and a number of swagpacks and postcards were taken up. I claimed one of the more popular badge choices before they all went.

The planned panel discussion with some of the authors who were present unfortunately had to be cancelled due to lack of interest. Maybe next time we can draw a few more into the panel room…

In all it was a very entertaining if tiring day. Next event for me is the World Book Night at the Fab Café on 23rd April. After that I am in Salford for the Mancster con… more on those in a later post.

D.A Lascelles is the author of Lurking Miscellany, Transitions (Mundania Press) and Gods of the Sea (Pulp Empires). He lives in Manchester UK. You can sometimes see him writing about Zombie porn on https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ but he mostly blogs about books, vampires, science fiction and Terry Pratchett. He is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his Pratchett articles was referenced on the French version of the author’s Wikipedia page.

This week the Vampire interrogation chair welcomes Elizabeth Morgan, author of Cranberry Blood to answer its brutal and probing questions, which it asks with all the pain and suffering of a Klingon Hug Dungeon…

1) What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?

Gosh, earliest memory of writing. When I was in primary school I remember my year sixth teacher reading out, god I think it was like a paragraph of some little story I wrote for some assignment in English. He was very impressed. Can’t remember what the story was about, but I think there was snow involved. As you can imagine it was a long time ago, but writing started off for me in my English lessons. If I was told we had to write a story, I would gladly do so and aim to write something good.

2) When did you decide to become a professional writer? Why did you take this step?

It was 2009 when I decided I wanted to write a book with the aim of publishing it. During my last year in college – 2006 – I started writing scripts – I studied Musical Theatre so I was very in to acting and shows etc – I did this up until 2008 until a friend of mine suggested I try and write a book. I was always very detailed with my scripts, too detailed for scripts really. So yeah, it took me a year to come up with something that I wanted to write and once I had the story I just dived right in.

I’ve wanted to act since I was about four – part of me still does now at the age of 26 – but during my final year of college it dawned on me that as much as I loved performing, and I did, I had an imagination that was constantly throwing ideas out at me and it seemed like such a shame to waste those ideas; to waste my imagination. So, that’s why I started writing with the aim to be a professional writer.

3) What would you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer? What about your greatest weakness? How do you overcome this weakness?

I don’t really feel that I have a strength. I would like to say my stories are interesting, funny, different, and sexy or that I at least have a good voice, strong characters… but I honestly don’t know.

Weakness is easy, and I am utterly ashamed to admit it, but grammar isn’t my strong point. I’m terrible at editing, which I suppose is a good thing because my editor would be out of a job if I was great at tidying my messy writing up. Naturally, it comes down to practice. I’m better than I was when I started writing. You pick things up as you go and notice those bad habits you have.

*Hangs head in shame*

I feel like a bit of a fraud; a writer who isn’t very good with grammar? Terrible. I have an imagination, though. I feel it’s a pretty damn good imagination. I can write a story, tell a -hopefully – good story, but I definitely need my editor to whip everything in to shape before it is ready for the public’s eyes.

4) Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?

I have lived in a terrace cottage in Cheshire for the last five years. It’s a lovely house, and the area is pretty, but no, I have not yet had any inspiration from this area. If I’m totally honest, although all my stories are set in different locations I haven’t had any inspiration from areas I have visited. Usually when I have an idea and I get the feel for where it could or should be set I go on google map, and then on to street view. I don’t really travel very much, which is a shame. I’m sure I would be inspired if I ever had the chance to venture out.

5) Which book, if any, would you consider to be your greatest influence and inspiration?

I wasn’t a big reader as a child. I know, it’s dreadful. I enjoyed my mother reading to me, but I didn’t really read a lot. And then during my first job at the age of 16 my colleague/friend lent me Mooncalled by Patricia Briggs…. I haven’t stopped reading since. I love books. I love stories. I’m ashamed that I didn’t start sooner, but as my friend said, it’s finding the right genre(s) and as crazy as it sounds I wasn’t really aware of how many genres there were until my friend got my hooked on books. That seems so stupid, but like I said I wasn’t a big reader. So Patricia Briggs book Mooncalled. Read it, loved it, read the next book in the series and so on. This was around the time I was writing scripts, around the time my other friend suggested I try writing a book of my own and well, after being introduced to Urban Fantasy I just fell in love with the genre, the possibilities and yeah, my mind was made up.

So, I guess you could say that Mooncalled was the book that inspired me to write my own stories.

6) What drove you to write about Vampires?

I’ve been dreaming about Vampires since I was a child. I would constantly dream they were chasing after me and my family; they would kill us off one by one and I would always be the one remaining. Yeah, I had issues lol

I’ve always been fascinated by Vampires and the way they have been portrayed through books and films, and well, I decided to pay attention to a very good piece of advice; write what you know and what you love.

I love Vampires. So, I just decided that if I was seriously going to write a book then I might as well write about one of my favourite creatures, so I did.

7) What do you think is the attraction for Vampire fiction? Why is it such a popular topic?

Personally, I believe the attraction is that they are altered, magical, and limitless version of ourselves. They are the impossible. Humans “aren’t” supposed to survive after death; they “aren’t” supposed to live forever, and they “aren’t” supposed to remain ageless, or possess great power, or strength. They’re primal and dangerous. They live by their own rules, but there is so many ways you can write these creatures, evil, tortured, good, but their nature will be forever held against them – who doesn’t love to read about inner turmoil. They can be the monster you would run from, or the bad boy/girl you desire, or even the boy/girl next door with a few hidden secrets, but you love them any way and will route for their happy ever after.

They are a more mystical and powerful version of ourselves, and at some point in all of our lives we will wonder what it would be like to be a vampire, or at least wonder what it would be like to be that mysterious and appealing.

8) In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?

Oh, tough question. You know, I’m going to go with the prince of darkness, Dracula. I’m sure every other vampire in fiction would fight well and give it their all, but Dracula is… well, the man. The undead man, but he’s epic. I’ve got to believe he will live up to his title.

Team Dracula! *cheers*

9) What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?

Sexiness, well Mitchell played by Aidan Turner in the TV series, Being Human. Irish Vampire, yes please. And yet I still have to say I do find Dracula sexy, he’s the prince of freakin’ darkness, how is that not hot?

I tend to find that most Vampires have rather good dress sense, so I wouldn’t be able to pick anyone out, but Selena from Underworld; totally rocks the leather cat-suit.

10) How well do you think one of your characters would fare against the winner(s) of the above?

I think any of my characters would give as good as they got. Everyone is capable of being defeated. So, I think they would stand a good chance. I think Heather would be able to kill Mitchell – though it pains me to say that – he was never really a fighter. Selena uses a gun and my Heather uses a sword, so if they were going hand to hand…. well, at present Selena and Dracula would probably beat Heather, but I have faith in my girl and after the U-turn her life is about to take, well, the odds might be more in her favour. 😉

11) Tell us the basic premise behind your latest novel.

My current WIP is still without a title – I have two titles in mind, but I can’t decide which one I prefer at present – so it is currently known as Blood 2. Blood 2 is the second book in my Blood Series, and follows on right where we left off from Cranberry Blood(Blood Series: Book One).

Heather Ryan has gone over to Italy to hunt down the second generation Vampire Marie in the hopes of discovering where the ancient, Marko Pavel is so that she can finally kill him. She is also hoping to discover where the three members of the UK Werewolf Pack – whom were kidnapped at the end of book one – have been taken too, but she is in the territory of the Italian Pack who are having a hard time believing that the Vampires are experimenting on Infecteds, Loup-Garous, and Werewolves with the goal of creating a hybrid.

We’re in new territory, we meet interesting new characters, and as I mentioned above the story is really just continuing from where we left off. So, more Heather and Brendan, more sarcasm, humour, action, blood, and the discovery of a few secrets, which will tie up loose ends from book one.

Blood 2 currently stands at 23,500 words. The aim is 60,000, but it’s just a very casual goal. The story could be longer, but I will know once I get to that point. Otherwise the aim is to have Blood 2 released this summer 2015.

Thanks so much for joining me, and thank you for letting me take part in Vampire Month, David. J

About the Author:

Elizabeth Morgan is a multi-published author of urban fantasy, paranormal, erotic horror, f/f, and contemporary; all with a degree of romance, a dose of action and a hit of sarcasm, sizzle or blood, but you can be sure that no matter what the genre, Elizabeth always manages to give a unique and often humorous spin to her stories.

Like her tagline says; A pick ‘n’ mix genre author. “I’m not greedy. I just like variety.”

She also has her hand in self-publishing. Look out for more information on her upcoming releases at her website: www.e-morgan.com

Away from the computer, Elizabeth can be found in the garden trying hard not to kill her plants, dancing around her little cottage with the radio on while she cleans, watching movies or good television programmes – Dr Who? Atlantis? The Musketeers? Heck, yes! – Or curled up with her two cats reading a book.

Now, do not get me wrong I am in a way pleased by this announcement as I did enjoy seeing the Master reimagined as a woman and I think it is good to get the character back. However, I have one very huge misgiving about it… the character has really been killed far too many times now.

The Master was originally on his last (13th) regeneration in the Tom Baker episode The Deadly Assassin, the story which in fact established the canon that there are only 12 regenerations a Time Lord can have before they are finally and completely dead. Later stories in the Tom Baker/Peter Davison crossover point (Logopolis and Keeper of Traken) established a plausible means for keeping him alive a little longer using the possession of another character who looked remarkably like his original goatee bearded form (to the extent it probably is not a spoiler to tell you which character would get possessed…) as a reasonable excuse. This, however, did not give him any more regenerations – once that body (which was not a Time Lord body) died that was it so his quest from that point was to gain more regenerations. This was a fact the Time Lords themselves used as a bribe to get him to perform a task for them in the Five Doctors – the promise of a whole new regeneration cycle*. His appearances since then (some Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy episodes, the Paul McGann movie) were all aimed at that goal – for example trying to steal the Doctor’s remaining regenerations.**

Then at some point he finally did get given the new regeneration cycle because of his promises to help during the Time War and that leads us to Uptopia and the wonderful portrayal by Derek Jocobi who I would have liked to have seen more of before his regeneration to John Simms but the fact he did regenerate shows he had been paid in full by the Time Lords before legging it all the way to the end of the universe and activating his Chameleon arch.

So far so good. John Simm was a good Master and managed to give across the right level of insane evil coupled with that empathic bond with Tennant’s Doctor which rightly portrayed the Xavier/Magneto relationship inherent in their associations – two people who were as close as brothers driven apart by wildly different ideologies.

Then Simm’s Master died. Not in a ‘it’s ok, I will regenerate’ way and merely be played by yet another actor but in a ‘no, there is no way I will regenerate’ way.

Then he came back… in a way that was a little unrealistic and far fetched even for Who.

Then he died again… this time also in a way that seemed to preclude regeneration.

And then with very little explanation as to how it happened, ‘he’ came back as ‘she’. Perfectly fine if it had been a regeneration – oh how much we have wanted to see a regeneration from male to female – but again that was apparently not an option. He was dead and gone, no coming back. Yet suddenly she is back… did they give a reasonable reason why? Not that I noticed…

Finally, at the end of the last series, she is also killed and again regeneration seems unlikely… yet here she is, back and ready for more.

Now, to be fair, that last death may be more than it appears. I am willing to accept that since that episode’s final moments were all about lies (the Doctor’s lies to Clara about Gallifrey, her lies to him about being happy) its possible that her death was an elaborate illusion and she was merely teleported somewhere else with the appearance of being totally vaporised. It’s a trick used before in Who (the Big Brother episode in the Ecclestone series, for example) so I am willing to accept it is possible. However, it does not detract from the fundamental issue. Death should not be cheap.

Some characters are famous only for being killed…

Killing a character should have an emotional impact. Equally so should bringing them back from death. Having grown to love or hate them over the course of your reading or viewing of them, to have that character suddenly be taken from you should be a vicious and painful experience. As a reader or viewer you should feel that pain. However, the more you kill them and the more you bring them back the more you stretch the suspension of belief and the more you dilute the emotional impact. Recurring villains are great, a much loved staple of fantasy and SF and even less fantasy based stories such as the Three Musketeers, and used right they can be wonderful creations. However you can push it too far and using the ‘they’re finally dead for good and this time we mean it. Oh no, we totally didn’t mean it’ card too many times (or more than once, really) is not good storytelling. If you have a popular character who you think may be worth a reappearance it is better planning to not kill them off. Have them escape from being captured (the Master has done this a few times too) or simply slip out the back door while the heroes are battling the convenient distraction they arranged for them. This applies doubly to Time Lord enemies. After all, you already have a convenient and perfectly plausible method for them to come back from the dead (regeneration). Why have to go to all the effort of making up some new ways to bring them back after managing to eliminate that as an option? Fans would rather the enemy were still alive – so they and the heroes know they are still a threat – or able to come back in a way which does not seem too ridiculous and fits in with previous observed metaphysics of the way the universe works.

OK, yeah, in some universes (Marvel and DC I’m looking at you) the afterlife has a revolving door and characters pop in for a brief break between adventures only to pop back when sales of the comic drop. And let us not forget poor old Kenny in South Park. However, in most fictional universes, it is better to stick to a more realistic means of death in order to keep the audience with you. Less South Park, more Game of Thrones, make every death meaningful not a cheap joke or marketing ploy.

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D.A Lascelles is the author of Lurking Miscellany, Transitions (Mundania Press) and Gods of the Sea (Pulp Empires). He lives in Manchester UK. You can sometimes see him writing about Zombie porn on https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ but he mostly blogs about books, vampires, science fiction and Terry Pratchett. He is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his Pratchett articles was referenced on the French version of the author’s Wikipedia page.

*Which incidentally also set up the canon that they can do that leaving the way clear for Moffat to have it happen to Matt Smith’s Doctor.

** May have been interesting at some point in all this to have seen a episode where he was trying to keep the Doctor alive out of enlightened self interest. After all, the more the Doctor dies and regenerates the less there is to steal…

I had meant to post about this not long after the final episode of the last series of Doctor Who aired. However, real life intervened and made my life a hell of busy days and frantic brain goblins. I’ve finally got some time now to get back into blogging and today saw me spot two articles online which triggered me to revisit some thoughts I had following the last episode.

Yeah, I feel it was fairly obvious that Moffat was using the gender switch with Missy as a way of basically setting a precedent to be used to allow the Doctor to one day have a similar switch. He also did the same with River Song – showing a regeneration from a young woman of colour to a middle aged, white woman. You can dredge up even earlier references to Time Lords even changing species, though Romana’s regeneration into several alien forms in Destiny of the Daleks is largely considered controversial for a number of reasons, it still shows the possibility exists. Not that this has triggered a similar change in the Doctor yet (unless you count Scottish as a change of race?) but the indication that Gallifreyians are basically blind to gender (and also likely race and species) is an encouraging thought and I hope that it is acted on sometime soon. Could this be an indication that Lenora Critchlow now has a good chance of being picked next?

If it should happen that the Doctor becomes female I do hope that it is handled with sensitivity rather than being merely a gimmick. It needs to be done in such a way that the viewers can believe it is the same character and this is not always possible even with a male actor. As for any casting, it needs to be based on who can do the job well rather than focussing on any criteria like ‘has to be female’.

Now, when I first saw Osgood’s death (and man that hurt…) I did have a little suspicion. You see, the whole set up seemed remarkably familiar. Ancient, evil nemesis of one of the heroes is captured by secretive, government sponsored agency keyed to battling alien threats. Said nemesis escapes and in the course of their fiendishly clever plan to get out, manages to kill a high ranking, popular and geeky member of that agency. Was I the only one who was thinking ‘Avengers’? Whether it was deliberate tribute or unconscious copying, you cannot deny there is a link there between Osgood and good old Agent Coulson.

The British version has a better scarf

Which did make me wonder if the plan wasn’t to kick off a spin off series in which a mysteriously resurrected Osgood is put in charge of a rag tag group of UNIT agents and set to fly around the world in a converted jet solving problems and fighting HYDRA… erm, I mean, Daleks… who have infiltrated their organisation. Just picture it, the complicated spy games as they try to figure out which UNIT agents are actually Daleks in disguise (hint: if they can answer a question without using the word ‘Exterminate’ they are probably safe) and the big twist when they realise that one of their own is actually a traitor (they probably should have realised that Dr. Darian Alek was dodgy from his computerised voice and the sink plunger attached to his chest) and the emotional fallout that emerges from that. Has to be compelling viewing.

Though, wait a minute… Doctor Who has already had a popular character killed by a nemesis who mysteriously came back to life to lead a rag tag group of agents of a secretive organisation… Could Torchwood’s Captain Jack have actually been the inspiration Joss Whedon used for Phil Coulson in Agents of SHIELD?

I guess we could trace tropes ad infinitum and claim that all modern SF is actually derived from a stone tablet found in Babylon (probably written by Asimov or Jules Verne) because there isn’t really anything new anymore, just different ways of presenting the same ideas. But I suppose it is not too much of a stretch to wonder if Joss Whedon was familiar with the concept of Torchwood before he developed Agents of SHIELD.

So, in all, I think it is a shame that Osgood has been declared as ‘officially dead’ by Moffat. She was a wonderful character with a lot of potential. Certainly far better companion material than some that have been in that position in recent years. While as a writer I can see the benefit in killing off a popular but not critical character, I feel Osgood’s death was maybe a step too far.

Though, despite all this, I think Moffat is still being beaten by Whedon in the bastard of the century competition. After all, he did kill Wash. You have to be far more brutal in killing off your beloved characters to beat that.

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D.A Lascelles is the author of Lurking Miscellany, Transitions (Mundania Press) and Gods of the Sea (Pulp Empires). He lives in Manchester UK. You can sometimes see him writing about Zombie porn on https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ but he mostly blogs about books, vampires, science fiction and Terry Pratchett. He is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his Pratchett articles was referenced on the French version of the author’s Wikipedia page.

Myself and Ed Fortune sat in front of a TARDIS. Picture taken by Frances Hardinge

World Book Night happens annually on the same day as Shakespeare’s Death, the 23rd April. On this day, volunteers give out free books in order to encourage reading in those who do not read much. Being a World Book Night giver I was of course giving out books on that night…

Except I wasn’t. Because I was giving them away on the 24th April. A day late… Damned temporal distortions again.

That was the base concept behind the Fashionably Late World Book Night party at the Fab Café in the city centre of Manchester. To be fashionably late in giving away our books. So, I turned up at a Geek themed basement bar with a bag full of books and author Frances Hardinge in tow for a night of poetry, prose and free books.

And there were a lot of free books:

Not only were there the 18 copies of Ben Aaronovitch’sRivers of London and the 36 copies of Agatha Christie’sAfter the Funeral provided to our givers by the World Book Night charity but also a large collection of ex review copies of books that had been sent to the Starburst offices and which were now no longer needed. This meant that any SF or fantasy fan could walk out with quite a haul if they so chose and the murder mystery fans were not ignored either. The books proved very popular with the crowd in the venue. Some of them had come here just for the books, some of them had been drawn by the promise of readings by local writers and poets and the chance to hob nob with them. Many more had come because it was a Thursday night and they always went to Fab on a Thursday.

The readings and guest writers were also popular. Everywhere you went there were conversations between writers, poets and their fans in topics ranging from their latest books to why it is not possible to do a decent film version of Lovecraftian horror. The bar was doing a roaring trade and the atmosphere was friendly and open. The SF theme decorations added to the unique nature of the venue and had at least one contributor (who shall remain nameless) running around gleefully with a camera taking shots of Daleks, Cybermen and TARDIS’s left right and centre. I was also taking photos, of course, but in my case it was, um, for professional reasons.

Even the presence of some of TVs most intimidating and scary villains did little to dampen the mood.

There was only one critic present at the event but he was notoriously brutal…

Though they did seem to lurk menacingly off stage whenever a writer was up doing their reading…

However, the presence of the resident critic from the Skaro evening Chronicle (tagline ‘News to exterminate to’) did little to deter the performers. We opened with R.A Smith who read an extract from his debut novel, Oblivion Storm. It went down well, he got applause and was not exterminated.

This was followed by, um, me… reading an extract from Transitions. This was my first ever public reading and I was petrified. Yeah, I know, I’m a teacher as well as a writer and yes speaking in public (sometimes in front of very hostile audiences) is part of the job. It’s practically all the job (well, apart from the planning, marking, admin and occasional public appearances for publicity) so I shouldn’t have been so scared. Shouldn’t but I was. You see, there is a difference between standing there and talking freely about a topic you know a lot about and reading something out loud. With the former there is room for improvisation and the chance to have discussions and take questions from the audience – to get them involved and active in the process. Reading aloud is more static and you have to stick to the script. It is not the time to start subconsciously editing your own work and reading out this new edited version instead of the published one (which I may have done a little bit). Also, the lack of light made reading difficult (thankfully the representative of Flapjack Press was able to supply a reading light to those who came after me to solve this problem). Despite all these issues I managed to struggle through the section where Gaius Lucius meets the mad old man in the cave and got my own round of applause and absence of extermination.

The poets and writers of Flapjack Press then took the stage in turns and wowed the audience with their poetry and prose. They included Tony Curry who read out poems relating to what it was like to be a man and Sarah Grace Logan whose poetry contrasted nicely with its more feminist vibe and her works based on the objects she sees daily in her work at the Manchester Museum.

This was followed by Frances Hardinge who read out a chilling extract from her latest and as yet unreleased novel, Cuckoo Song. It was unfortunate that due to a postal service snafu there were no copies of this book available for sale or signing. If the expected parcel from her publisher had actually arrived that night would have been the first time and place that book would have been on sale in the world – a true exclusive.

There was then a short break before the second half of the evening, this compered by another local poet, Anna Percy who also performed her own poetry. She was joined by Dermot Glennon, Zach Roddis and the wonderfully anarchic comedy poetry of Jackie O’Hagan making this night a truly North Western literary occasion. All performers were well received by the audience and did sterling sets that ended in applause. More importantly, none of them were exterminated by the resident critic, for which I am sure they were all grateful.

Unfortunately we had to leave before the end, though I hear that the evening ended with dancing to nineties classics which I am sorry we missed. On the free book table as we left there were no more copies of Rivers of London and only a handful of copies of After the Funeral. The Starburst review copies were also much reduced, presumably meaning that there is now much more room in their offices for future ARCs. I grabbed a handful of the Agatha Christies as we said our final goodbyes to Anna Percy and the other contributors. Those copies were offered to students at my college the next morning and one was gifted to the college library.

Shown here are only a handful of the photographs I took that evening. I’d try to cram more in but I fear this blog post would be an endless sea of photography. If you want to seem more of them, you can go and look at my Flickr account. If any of the poets or writers who were there wish to make use of any of these for their own web pages or blogs you may feel free. Contact me and I can send you the original copies. I’d appreciate an acknowledgement in return.

With such a successful night I am not sure how we can beat it next year but I am sure we will have a damn good try. There may have to be ballet dancing elephants.

It is Christmas (well it will be in a couple of days) and I have just been released from work so that warrants a special post. I had actually been wracking my brains to think of something Christmas themed to post about and then it struck me that I had not done a Geek Quotient post for ages and there is a Christmas themed film that is bursting with potential for the GQ treatment – Love Actually.

You see, like Downton Abbey it is full of the sort of British actors who end up in sci fi and fantasy films or series on a regular basis and, in fact, given some of the names here it would not surprise me if it scored even higher than Downton’s rather good score of 0.633.

So, as usual, we look at the list of names on the cast list on IMDB, take a note of the number of them who have been in something sci fi or fantasy related and divide that into the total number of cast members.

The truth is that it is the sheer size of the cast list on IMDB that scuppers Love Actually. There are 115 cast members listed and many of them are only actors in this one film. So while there are actually very many contributing to the GQ here (57 in total) it is still just less than half the total cast. This is one of the flaws of the method of the GQ – you have to stick to the cast as listed on IMDB.

Despite that disappointing score, you still have to admit that Love Actually includes some major geek talent covering a broad range of films and TV shows. As well as the ones mentioned above we also have some very obvious Harry Potter links (Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, who was also in Men in Black III among other things), quite a few who were in Ashes to Ashes (Rory MacGregor, for example), Game of Thrones (particularly the actor playing Liam Neeson’s son, Thomas Brodie-Sangster who was also in Doctor Who), the Walking Dead (Andrew Lincoln) and the Resident Evil series of films (Sienna Guillory). And even some of the actors you might not consider to have had a geek credit have some. Gregor Fisher (Gormenghast), Hugh Grant (was the Doctor in Curse of the Fatal Death along with Rowan Atkinson but also starred in a horror called Lair of the White Worm) and even Colin Firth scores with his role in Nanny McPhee.

Of all the cast list, the one that surprised me the most was Margery Mason. That she was the tea lady on the Hogwart’s Express is not the surprise. That came when I found out that she was also the aged old crone who boos Princess Buttercup in The Princess Bride in 1987, a very memorable character for her very brief screen time. Incidentally, unless the IMDB entry for her is woefully out of date, Margery earned a telegram from the Queen in September this year for reaching the ripe old age of 100 so well done to her for that!

Margery Mason, playing wonderfully batty old crones for over 30 years

So, there you have it. The GQ of Love Actually. A film which had great promise for a high score but didn’t make it due to the huge cast list. So, I am still waiting for something to beat Downton Abbey’s score… Any suggestions for a non geek film or series that might beat that score are welcomed.

*Including Caroline John, who played Liz Shaw in classic Who and who was there for the merest seconds in the funeral scenes as the mother of Liam Neeson’s character’s recently deceased girlfriend.